Hercules Offshore: Fleet Status Analysis As Of September 17, Where Is The Bottom? [View article]

I think mgt tanked the stock to maintain control using some carefully crafted news, due to a hostile buyout that was rumoring about earlier this year, then was caught up in the strong dollar / slowing oil demand / seasonal macro situation. Can't hide out forever ...

Seeking Alpha apparently will respond to complaints about posts ... conducting review and possible removal, along with 'moderator screen before allowing post' for serial violators, however my example does not involve SA, so not sure why you bring that in.

My case revolves around yahoo message boards, where an interesting, pertinent and hard-hitting but essentially polite series of posts (regarding a certain poster's evidence, insights and opinions alleging naked shorting & manipulative flash trading of HERO) DISappeared, within moments to minutes, of first appearing. I have long followed that other person's posts since his content ultimately proved quite valuable.

It is a fact that yahoo has added an (abusable, imho) 'feature' allowing posters to remove their own comments, so the possibility exists that a poster could have deleted their own, however when I personally tested (posting cut&paste of my saves of some of those disappearing posts), my posts also appeared in the stream however quickly went wholly missing or were marked 'deleted' (topic line showed, comment gone, none of which was done by me).

I next did a bit of edit on the original content (kept the gist, rearranged / changed some wording, in order to disrupt any automated screening yahoo might have between the original posts and my re-posts), my altered posts ALSO disappeared some short time later. (No TOS violations, no obviously objectionable content , etc).

Now I believe yahoo will delete posts unreviewed, perhaps on some threshold count of complaints received, and that organized groups use that fact (employing multiple IDs flagging valid posts as abusive) to suppress content that interferes with their plans. I guess an alternative is that yahoo participates intentionally in manipulation of their message board media but I have no real facts to support that.

But I have concluded that that groups are (illegally ?) gaming social media systems to hide their suspect efforts on HERO - and of course many other equities.

What this has to do with HERO is my suspicion that groups engaging in such low brow tactics are in a panic, heavily over-extended short, faced with a evaporating genuine trading float, thus forced to flash trade, naked short and publicly attack the company ad nauseum ( or 'short & distort', as my respected poster likes it call it) in attempt to churn thier way out of their untenable position, and that this will all soon reverse , and HERO will trade up at a peer level.

There is something NOT right going on with this ticker and hopefully it will blow up in the face of the marker manipulator that is conducting the attack.

While on the yahoo board there is the usual gaggle of shorts recycling the same loud claims in attempt to bury any fresh comments, but there were about 20~30 posts of an informed and detailed nature analyzing the short / naked / flash trade manipulating this name. ALL those posts disappeared. Copies of those posts disappeared. No objectionable content, just vanished.

Look to your SA PMs with a good lead into this information, I hope you two move forward with the expose. (ps having a little trouble with SA PM at this moment, will be in touch…)

there is a well regarded, knowledgeable, and long time poster on HERO yahoo board who is detailing & documenting his evidence and opinions on the rampant apparent naked shorting that has tied HERO near these lows. His current conclusion is that GS is probably behind this, and that without phantom shares and naked shorts this stock ought not even have shares available to trade in the volumes recorded …

This poster also claims he has had a long time ID hacked, he changed IDs and continued posting , and his new ID posts are disappearing within moments. Other posters there are copying & pasting the OPs posts, and these TOO are disappearing in minutes if not seconds. No profanity, no TOS violations, just pure simple substantial opinions on the questionable trading HERO 'enjoys'.

Sorry for being vague, I leave it to the original poster to reveal more about the situation ( I know he reads SA) but between yahoo and IH, interested parties should be able to understand the situation, and perhaps increase the chorus of complaints to the SEC for stock manipulation using public message boards.

The corruption this implies is staggering … I recommend all interested honest readers ( this kind of excludes the short + distort crowd involved in this terminal game) REPORT THE MANIPULATION TO THE SEC

I realize the temptation many have is to quickly trade on this name, but with the near stranglehold institutions have ( 51,316,433 held, out of only 58M outstanding, owned mostly by a Who's Who in bio, and holdings solidly up several percent since the relistor crl, ) this looks like one of the better keepers in the bio spectrum. The solid institutional fraction , if anything, will limit run up trading vols. A huge partner 20 times their size as is SLXP adds to my optimism. Looks like a take over prospect for Salix. Good luck all , hope you dont throw away high probability profits.

looks like the Bakers pared their ARIA , just a little anyway, at last 13F season, but ARIA 's biggest 10 or so holders were by and large heavy adders. http://bit.ly/JPOL9R

I expect to welcome back Julian & Felix et al soon based on the welcome news out today for ARIA and their patients: Ariad Pharm announces U.S. resumption of marketing and commercial distribution of Iclusig (ponatinib) in refractory Philadelphia-positive leukemias.

Looks to me after some initial flipping ( and a AMEX error that will bust a few trades trades over there :) there is some serious and stealthy buying mixed in with the 33M panicked shorts seeking cover. The falling knife is done vibrating from the floor stick and being picked up safely !